Bangladesh has not been able to stop the depletion of forex reserves even after extensively reducing imports. Reserves fell to $19.13 billion from $19.4 billion during this week, according to the Bangladesh Bank's Weekly Selected Economic Indicators published on Thursday.
The report showed that the amount of reserves stood at $24.66 billion on Thursday, but the figure dropped to $19.13 billion under the IMF method.
Bangladesh’s trade gap narrowed to $3.81 billion during the July-October period of FY24, down from $9.62 billion posted during the same period previous FY, resulting from a heavy reduction in import payments to mitigate the ongoing USD shortage.
According to the balance of payment data, during the first four months of FY24, countries import payment declined by 20.54 per cent to $20.26 billion compared to the same period of previous FY. In July-October FY23 such amount was $25.51 billion.
Despite narrowing the trade gap, negative growth of wage-earners remittance, foreign direct investment, aid flow, and inflow of foreign loans, the country’s financial account was $3.96 billion deficit in the first four months of FY24, compared to $1.27 billion surplus year-on-year.
Financial deficit continues to deplete the country’s forex reserves.
As a result of the fall in reserves, depreciation of the taka continues. In July, the interbank rate per USD was Tk 108.70, which rose by 1.65 per cent to Tk 110.50 at the end of October this year. Now the rate is Tk110.25.
